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The
company's voluntary exit offer was available to eligible
employees in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United
States, the company's Chief People Officer Amy Coleman wrote in
a blog post Monday.
“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us,” Coleman wrote. “We’ll
learn from it. At the same time, we’ll keep helping people focus
on the work that matters most, build new skills and, where it
makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft.”
The company, which releases its quarterly financial results
Wednesday, had approximately 223,000 full-time employees at the
end of June.
Shares of Microsoft Corp., based in Redmond, Washington, hit an
all-time high this month. The stock rose about 1% on Monday.
In May, Microsoft planned to offer buyouts to about 8,750
people, or 7% of its U.S. workforce, according to two people
familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak about it
publicly. In July, the company said it was cutting 4,800 jobs,
about 2.1% of its global workforce, including a large number of
workers at its Xbox video game business.
The gusher of investment in data centers — likely topping $700
billion this year — to power artificial intelligence has made
memory chips, computer processors and other equipment, as well
as electricity, more expensive. Economists expect it will
continue to push up inflation at least through the end of this
year.
Microsoft has been ramping up its AI capabilities for several
years. In 2024 the company revealed a new class of AI-imbued
personal computers that centered on fusing its AI assistant,
called Copilot, into the Windows operating system for PCs, where
Microsoft already has the eyes of millions of consumers.
And in October 2025 Microsoft introduced a new artificial
intelligence character called Mico, a floating cartoon face
shaped like a blob or flame that embodies the software giant’s
Copilot virtual assistant.
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